VR

HTC has just dropped another tidbit of news here in Barcelona, on the eve of the Mobile World Congress trade show. Namely that it’s gearing up to compete in the gaming wearable space, announcing a partnership with games publisher Valve to bring a virtual reality headset to market, called the HTC Vive — to compete with the likes of the Oculus Rift. Read More

Mattel’s venerable View-Master, the stereoscopic photo viewer so familiar to kids, is now using Google Cardboard Virtual Reality technology to bring life to those old 3D images.
The View-Master of yesteryear was a beautiful thing. By slipping in micro-reels from movies, far-off destinations, or from your very own life, users were able to see anything they wanted. The company says it has… Read More

Virtual reality promises a lot of potential changes to the way we experience the world, but the ramifications it has for how we tell stories might be among the most interesting. Vice News is offering a glimpse into what news broadcasting might look like when VR is omnipresent with a report on the New York Millions March from December, where people rallied to protest the killings by police of… Read More

The virtual reality space is pretty much Oculus Rift, and then everyone else. Even Sony’s Morpheus VR project was conspicuously absent from CES 2015, but one startup stood up and made sure that there was more to VR at the event than just the excellent Crescent Bay demo: Sulon Technologies were showing off an early prototype of their Sulon Cortex, a headset that merges augmented reality… Read More

The education potential of VR and the Oculus Rift is already well-established, but this year at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Toyota showed off TeenDrive365, a driver education simulation to teach new drivers about the risks of distracted driving. The simulator puts drivers in the cockpit of a Toyota vehicle, in a fully immersive virtual environment that includes… Read More

Oculus is at CES 2015, giving a larger set of people a chance to experience virtual reality with its latest prototype, the Crescent Bay version of the Oculus Rift. The Crescent Bay edition of the VR hardware originally broke cover back in September of 2014, but only a small handful of folks have tested it out thus far. After our demo, I became one of the slightly expanded group that can claim… Read More

Fitness tracking app Runtastic has developed a proof-of-concept piece of software for Oculus Rift VR headsets that allow the user to do a real 7-minute workout, while experiencing a virtual environment at the same time. The new software lets you do squats, lunges, yoga and the official 7-Minute Workout, all while immersed in virtual environs designed to inspire you more than the basement… Read More

This week, Google dropped so many updates today that we couldn’t help but talk about them, including new specs and software for the Google Cardboard smartphone-based VR program, and an updated version of Android Wear that supports custom watchfaces (officially, whereas before they were everywhere but not built using any kind of proper API).
Darrell Etherington, Kyle Russell and Greg… Read More

Samsung‘s VR efforts are one leaky ship lately, with a report today echoing earlier rumors that the company would be partnering with Oculus VR for its own headset. Now, a leaked pre-release version of the Samsung VR software has made its way into the hands of SamMobile, apparently revealing some of the early functionality the head-mounted display will have, and detailing some of its… Read More

If you’re interested in virtual reality, then a new report from CNET that maintains Samsung is working directly with Facebook-owned Oculus on a headset that uses mobile devices to generate VR environments and experiences should get you excited. We’ve heard before that Samsung was working on its own VR headset, but this is further evidence that they might have a helping hand from… Read More

There’s nothing that rankles me like a chance to try out some cool new tech squandered – and that’s what happened at Google I/O this year. I managed to snag some face-on time with Google Cardboard, the surprise gift for attendees that consists of a simple folding cardboard harness for your Android device and some concave plastic, but my own unit went missing in the hazy fugue… Read More

The surprise hit of Google I/O was without a doubt Cardboard. Google’s paper product — or phone-based VR viewer — made its debut during yesterday’s keynote, and today, David Coz, the project’s founder, revealed its origins. Read More

Control VR is a startup which has created a wearable system that captures precise motion data for virtual reality applications. On its Kickstarter page the most intriguing use shown for its gloves and armbands is using its exact finger-digit tracking to simulate a keyboard in virtual reality, which could open the door to a number of productive VR applications beyond gaming and teleconferencing. Read More

Samsung is prepping an Oculus Rift competitor of its own, according to a new report by Engadget. The Korean electronics giant is no stranger to stepping into emerging market categories, and virtual reality appears to be next on the docket, as Samsung is said to be currently building a VR headset with a planned announcement date of this year.
The hardware is already with a group of early… Read More

Oculus Rift has plenty of potential for changing human interaction, but what about other animals? One project from Iowa State University assistant professor Austin Stewart (via FastCo Exist) imagines how VR goggles could make chickens believe they’re free-range, even when they’re not. They can explore a virtual grassland, and with future iterations of Oculus, even peck at the… Read More

The Oculus Rift and its creator Oculus VR have been purchased by Facebook, and that’s causing some, including Minecraft developer Mojang, to reconsider their projects for the platform. But others are doubling down on their Oculus investment, including Technology Transfer Services (TTS), a company that designs training software for workforce education. Read More

Oculus has unveiled a Rift development kit to replace the first-generation one it stopped selling just last week, and the $350 developer hardware ups the game considerably over its predecessor. The new system is up for pre-order on the Oculus website now, and it’s based on the Crystal Cove prototype shown off by the startup at CES earlier this year.
That means it adds a depth-sensing… Read More

Virtual reality is bound to be a part of the future of gaming, and Toronto-based Sulon Technologies is debuting their own take on this exciting space at GDC in San Francisco. Their Cortex gaming platform is a fully immersive gaming experience, that turns any physical space into essentially a holodeck, using a spatial scanner, a processing unit, and a visor mount that plugs into any smartphone… Read More

The Oculus Rift development kit is no longer for sale in most parts of the world, the company reports. The dev hardware for the virtual reality headset has been on sale since Oculus kicked off their Kickstarter campaign, and began shipping around March 30, 2013. Since its original development, Oculus has iterated on the hardware design multiple times, so it isn’t surprising to see… Read More

Head-mounted computing probably still seems a bit far-fetched to most every day users, but component manufacturers and tech suppliers are already gearing up to provide a future supply chain with the parts it needs to build such devices affordably and easily. Bosch Sensortec and Hillcrest Labs are two companies working in this space, and they’ve come up with complete sensor package… Read More